UNIONS PLAN PERMANENT
WORKERS MEMORIAL

One day soon, the late Larry Bevis, an American Federation of Teachers member from Birmingham, Ala., will be remembered forever.

That’s because Bevis’ name, thanks to his union, will be one the first to be inscribed in the brickwork of the permanent Workers Memorial to be erected on the grounds of the National Labor College/George Meany Center in Silver Spring, Md.

Bevis died two years ago. His name will join those of thousands of other workers who have died on the job, starting with the Haymarket massacre by Chicago police in 1886. The names will be reminders that toiling for a living, as one speaker at the April 28 candlelit memorial ceremony said, can still be at times “dirty, dangerous…deadly.”

Bevis’ job wasn’t dirty, but it was dangerous: It cost him his life. He was a classified employee and member of AFT Local 2143 at Chalkville Elementary School and, the unionist reading his name said, “He was struck and killed by a speeding vehicle while performing duties of a school crossing guard.”

Bevis’ name and story was one of dozens read at this week’s groundbreaking for the memorial, which was forced indoors by heavy rain. Others included the Haymarket workers--including those wrongly convicted--Operating Engineers, Electrical Workers, Elevator Constructors, Communications Workers, Steel Workers and Mine Workers. CWA Safety and Health Director Dave LaGrande reminded the crowd of the 9/11 victims, including one unnamed Newspaper Guild member, who died when the terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center.

All of them and more will be honored by the memorial, to be financed by union and individual contributions. It will feature individual bricks honoring individual workers who died on the jobs and benches from the unions that honor groups of workers.

The reading of the names and how they died came on the 19th annual Workers Memorial Day, commemorating the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Unions held similar observances in cities from coast to coast. The ceremonies honored the 5,840 workers killed on the job in 2006--the latest year for which data are available--and tens of thousands who were injured.

But the D.C. ceremony was not just reading names and lighting candles. It took its cue from the late Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, the famed pro-worker organizer and agitator who lived nearby: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!”

LaGrande remembered “the recovery workers and cleanup workers” who came to “Ground Zero” from all over the nation after the attacks. Many of them are sickening--and dying--from cancers and respiratory illnesses contracted from inhaling the combination of pulverized cement, asbestos, jet fuel and toxic chemicals while working on “The Pile.” They’re also struggling with Bush government indifference and hostility even though, as another speaker said, they “inhaled Drano” while working on the job.

Their struggle was one of many that speakers reminded the crowd about--and also, as AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt-Baker said, one big reason for labor’s heavy involvement in this year’s political campaign: To elect a Congress that will strengthen worker safety and health law and a president who will enforce it.

Meantime, the toll of deaths and injuries continues; so did the remembrances.

“Last year, we lost 36 so far from traumatic injury or poisonings,” added Steel Workers Safety and Health Director Mike Wright. “This year, it’s 22 so far.”

And that’s not counting the injured survivors, many of whom he interviews in post-accident probes. “They’re all heroes,” he said of the dead and injured. “Not because they lost their lives. Their lives were taken and ripped away from them. But because they got up and went to work in a job that was dirty, dangerous and ultimately deadly. Heroism is common, but we don’t notice it until it comes to the level of tragedy.”

And one participant read a poem by Ironworker Local 396 Bob Carroll Jr. of St. Louis, entitled, “The Wall.” One verse concluded: You might ride the cloud-covered beam to a heavenly dream--Or ride the express ball to hell.”

There was one bright note, showing how union contracts can protect workers from death and injury: A rousing song by International Longshore and Warehouse Union member Harry Stamper, entitled We Just Come To Work Here; We Don’t Come To Die. Stamper, of Coos Bay, wrote it after his boss ordered him to undertake a potentially deadly log-rolling assignment, he refused, was disciplined, ILWU filed a grievance for him--and they won.

Still, the predominant mood at the ceremony was not just of memory but of the need to fight on. “None of us are compensated enough to risk our lives and our health,” Holt-Baker said.

For details on how to buy a brick at the memorial ($125), or slate pavers ($2,000) commemorating historic workplace tragedies, such as the Sago mine disaster, or whole categories of fallen workers via the granite benches ($10,000), contact the college at (301) 431-5406.